The West Has Fewer Journalists Based in Tehran Now Than Were in Berlin in the 1930s. Gordon Crovitz… see note please
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304765304577482921642544942.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond
GIVEN THE MINDSET OF THE AMERICAN JOURNALISTS, MOST OF THEM WOULD PROBABLY LIE AS HANS VON KALTENBORN AND WILLIAM DURANTY DID IN THE 30S….RSK
“Unusually Good Forecast for Iran Nuclear Talks”—Christian Science Monitor, May 22
“‘Detailed,’ ‘Engaged’ Iran Nuclear Talks Go to Second Day”—Reuters, May 24
“Negotiations with Iran Conclude Fruitlessly”—New York Times, May 24
“Fresh Iran Nuclear Talks Set for Moscow”—AlJazeera.net, May 25
“Iran Nuclear Talks in Moscow End ‘Without Breakthrough'”—BBC.co.uk, June 20
“Iran Blames World Powers’ ‘Enmity’ and ‘Dishonesty’ for No Progress in Moscow Nuclear Talks”—Associated Press, June 21
Ten years ago this summer, an Iranian dissident first warned the world about efforts by the mullahs to build a nuclear weapon. Since 2002, headlines have touted talks and possible inspections, with no results other than an Iran closer to a bomb. President Obama, who vows not to let Iran go nuclear, hopes economic sanctions will work, as 44 senators have urged him to drop the pretense of negotiations.
The case of Iran raises novel questions about how open societies should deal with risks from closed societies.
Iranian leaders have always claimed the right to build nuclear weapons and have been clear about their intent. In 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an Iranian student group: “Many who are disappointed in the struggle between the Islamic world and the infidels have tried to spread the blame. They say it is not possible to have a world without the United States and Zionism. But you know this is a possible goal.”
The known unknown is how seriously to take the threat. The regime has made this hard to calculate by blocking access to information. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Iran last year imprisoned more of its journalists than any other country and tied Cuba for the greatest number driven into exile. Responding to an inquiry about how many Western reporters are based in Iran, CPJ could identify only a handful, almost all with wire services. In recent years, correspondents from the BBC, Agence France-Presse and Spain’s El País have had their visa renewals rejected and had to leave the country.
Getty ImagesAmerican journalist and author William L Shirer in 1947.
The result is little information on which to base a view of whether sanctions can work, how mullahs would use a bomb, or the impact of sending cyber-viruses and assassinating nuclear scientists.
Limited information about Iran should be cause for alarm but not for paralysis. There is recent fascination about an earlier period when the U.S. was similarly trying to understand the risks of a totalitarian regime arming itself while openly threatening hostilities. Last year’s bestseller “In the Garden of Beasts,” by Erik Larson, focuses on William Dodd, the U.S. ambassador in Berlin in the early 1930s, when Hitler still might have been stopped. Dodd spoke up about the dangers, but the State Department dismissed him as an alarmist.
There were also plenty of American journalists in Berlin in the 1930s, and they are the focus of another recent book about Nazi Germany, “Hitlerland” by Andrew Nagorski. Mr. Nagorski describes the way many reporters were taken in by Hitler. Others were alarmed early, such as Edgar Mowrer of the Chicago Daily News, who was expelled soon after Hitler came to power.
Mr. Nagorski identifies William Shirer of CBS Radio among the journalists who “stood out in terms of his ability to discern the meaning of events as they happened, avoiding the trap of wishful thinking.” Shirer’s 1941 book, “Berlin Diary,” was highly influential in informing a still-isolationist U.S. about the Nazis. He later wrote the classic history, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”
Germany was hard enough to understand, even with scores of diplomats and reporters. Unlike in Berlin, the State Department hasn’t had ears on the ground in Tehran since 1981, when the U.S. Embassy hostages were freed. Perhaps the best source on Iran is Bernard Lewis, the academic who has written about Islam since the 1930s.
In his recent memoir, “Notes on a Century,” he writes: “Particular importance should be attached to the policies, and perhaps still more the attitudes, of the present rulers of Iran, who seem to be preparing for a final apocalyptic battle between the forces of God and of the Devil”—meaning themselves and the West, respectively. “They see this as the final struggle of the End of Time and are therefore undeterred by any level of slaughter and destruction even among their own people. ‘Allah will know his own’ is the phrase commonly used, meaning that among the multiple victims God will recognize the Muslims and give them a quick pass to heaven.”
In an era of transparency, countries that close themselves off from the flow of information should lose the benefit of the doubt about their intentions. Even without diplomats or journalists on the ground, it’s clear the likeliest reason for a country to seek such isolation is that it has plenty to hide. We know more than enough about Iran to make it imperative to do what it takes to make sure it doesn’t get the bomb.
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